For one brief shining moment, the breaks finally came for Boris Said

Boris Said in the No. 09 edges Max Papis at the finish line at Montreal. (NASCAR / Getty Images)

Last year at about this time Boris Said was sitting on the pit-road wall at Barber Motorsports Park talking about his latest failed attempt to get a full-time ride in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.

He had been full of optimism at Daytona that year when he signed on to help a new team that vowed to take NASCAR by storm. But those plans lasted as long as a summer thunderstorm in Alabama.

So Said was at Barber for the Grand Am race, co-driving in the junior league KONI Series race with the latest young hotshot driver "because I love to race."

Fast forward to Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal on Sunday. Said is driving for Robby Benton's RAB Racing, which scraped together enough resources to put Said in two Nationwide Series races at Watkins Glen and Montreal.

Benton is the quintessential little guy in the NASCAR garage. He had enough talent as a driver to make it to ARCA and NASCAR's junior divisions but not enough money to make it work.

So he became another in a long line of dreamers -- race team owners convinced they can make it, scrimping, begging and borrowing, hoping to hang around long enough for that one lucky break.

"We've had a tough year. We've struggled for sponsorship. We've done what we had to do to survive," Benton said after the race at Montreal. "We made the plan at the beginning of the year to run the Glen and here and just see what happens."

What happened was the improbable, the impossible and the unlikely all rolled into one.

Marcos Ambrose was determined not to let another win slip away, but broke a sway bar.

Carl Edwards was the defending champion, but fell victim to mechanical problems.

Robby Gordon was desperate to avenge the 2007 race he still believes he won, but he ran out of gas.

And suddenly, Said found himself leading the final lap in the No. 09 Ford for a company whose entire staff would make up an average pit crew on one of the mega teams. His crew chief, Scott Zipadelli, had been "hanging out, building go karts" when Benton recruited him.

"I just called him up and said, 'Hey man, do you want to come go to the race with us and help us out?'" Benton said.

Alongside Said in that final turn was Max Papis, an Italian road racer who has struggled all year and had just lost his Cup ride. Behind them was Jacques Villeneuve, the hometown hero and former Formula One world champion who has had even less luck than Said breaking into the Cup ranks.

The finish was one for the ages -- a door-to-door drag race to the stripe with Said edging Papis by 12 thousandths of a second.

"Finally," Said shouted as he climbed out of his car in Victory Lane. It was the first career Nationwide win for the 47-year-old, just his second victory in a combined 128 starts in the top three NASCAR series.

Years of frustration melted away.

"It's like a weight off your shoulders," he said. "I'm shocked, overwhelmed. I thought I was going to cry, but I didn't."

It wasn't Appalachian State beating Michigan. It wasn't Team USA vanquishing the Soviets at Lake Placid. But it was sweet.

It won't earn Said a full-time ride for 2011. It won't save RAB Racing from financial struggles. By next week it will be ancient news.

But for one brief shining moment in sunny Montreal Boris Said finally broke through.

"Everyone says you're too old; it's too late; you don't have enough money you're not doing it enough," he said. "When people say no, it makes me try harder. I'm going to keep trying until I win more of these, I'm going to keep trying until I win a Cup race."